- McLibel -

I disagree

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. But personally, I think there is a greater need for human rights then animal rights. Your focus on animal rights tells me perhaps you don't realize the sheer scale and savage nature of United States' human rights abuses, past and present.

There isn't any less pain involved when you have a child dying from starvation then cattle getting their throat slit. Either way is extremely painful. It isn't any less painful for a human to bleed to death from a gunshot wound.

And what about the the thousands of citizens in US client states like Indonesia, Burma, Guatemala, El Salvador, Phillipines, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Chile, Uraguay, Peru, Argentina etc. etc (the list is very long) who are murdered and tortured to death everyday?

Throughout the 1980's and 1990's, the United States continue to support bloody interventions against popular reformist governments in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and East Timor. In Nicaragua, the US -backed mercenary force killed over 30,000 people, orphaned more than 9,000 children and caused over $3 billion destruction of homes, schools, health clinics, crops and other facilities. In Angola, a war of attrition, waged by CIA-backed forces has left200,000 killed, more than 20,000 orphaned and 50,000 seriously maimed--giving Angola the highest amputee rate in the world.

In Cuba, the economic sanctions continue. Cuba is probably the only Latin country to escape US neo-colonialism. Cuba is the only Latin country to have a rather successful revolution, is probably the only Latin country (with a non-white majority) where half the population isn't being murdered by government death squads and where the people aren't starving to death, despite internationally-condemned US economic sanctions. No more than two foreign countries in the world (Israel and England) support the sanctions against Cuba.

In addition, the US invaded Grenada to overthrow a revolutionary government and Panama to overthrow a populist reformist government, replacing both with puppet regimes propped up by US bayonets. What Nicaragua, Mozambique, East Timor, Grenada and Panama had in common were governments who were redirecting significent portions of their land, labor and resources towards the needs of their people and away from the exploitation of the multinationals.

Places like Indonesia, where the military dictatorship exists only because it is armed to the teeth by the US. It is widely known that the national elections held this year were rigged by the unpopular Indonesian regime. People took to the streets in protest, and over two hundred of them massacred by police and government troops.

It isn't any less painful for the thousands of Burmese in the countryside, who are currently being worked literally to death to build an oil pipleline, under the guidance of Unocal. The US Congress pays lip service by condemning Unocal's operation in Burma, but does nothing to try to stop this human slavery.

And what about the American mequiladoras in Mexico, right near the US border? There people work virtually as slaves for dozens of American companies. No benefits, no unions, starvation wages, filthy, unsafe working conditions. The rate of cancer, work injury and birth defects is especially high in these "economic zones," "free trade zones," some of the US Govt/corporate euphemisms for slavery.

For all their talk about "human rights," US government leaders prop up regimes throughout the world that use assassination squads, torture, and terror to support allies of the corporate order. In US-supported states, strikes are outlawed, unions destroyed, wages cut and innocents murdered.

There are some out there who work to promote this greater level of awareness, to expose American foreign policy for what it is, to expose the incredible lies and censorship. We need more like you.